I loaded up my plate with crackers and slices of white cheese. “A wrap. Okay.” That meant he was gone—gone from my life. Our last words to each other would be for an underwear commercial. That sucked. Plus I still hadn’t figured out how he knew I was fleeing a security guard in Malibu on Friday morning.
Across the room, someone laughed in a way that sounded like Keith’s laugh, and my skin went clammy as I realized I hadn’t thought about him once during the shoot. He’d asked me on the ride in if I wanted him to cancel his business plans for the day to keep me company for the shoot, and as I thought about his calm presence, I felt a pull, like there were magnets inside me, tuned to activate with thoughts about Keith.
“Mitchell, can you be in love with two people at once?”
“I’m g*y.”
“I live in a small town. I really don’t know all the g*y stereotypes, so give me a hint.”
“Yes, silly. There are different kinds of love. You can be in love with the way someone makes you feel, but that’s fleeting and dangerous. You can love someone for their good qualities, but that falls back into friendship, especially if they’re not good at kissing. And you can love someone because you don’t know how not to.”
My mouth dropped open momentarily. When I recovered, I pulled him over to a corner and whispered, “The first one is how I feel about Dalton. He makes me feel like I’m going to fly apart, like stardust in a supernova. Then I met Keith, and he’s just an amazing guy, so supportive and sensitive. Maybe too sensitive, but he’s a fireball in bed, you know?”
“And do you love either of these guys?”
I put some cheese on a cracker and took a bite. Munching away, I said, “I like to keep my eyes open. Wide open. But you have to close your eyes to fall in love, I think.”
He scratched his neck, looking thoughtful. “You close your eyes to kiss, so that makes sense.”
“Keith’s going to Milan, and I’m going back to Washington, so it doesn’t matter how I feel.”
“Don’t say that. In life, how you feel is probably the only thing that matters.”
We stared at each other in silence for a thoughtful minute. Some crumbs fell from my mouth down into my food-catchers.
I looked down, realizing I was standing in a room full of people, wearing nothing but my underwear.
So much for keeping my damn eyes open.
The second half of the day was less arduous. In fact, it was duller than sitting in the car while my mother ran her weekend errands. I was bored to the point where reading the fine print of my contract actually seemed fun and interesting.
After the seventh read-through of the same issue of Vogue while other people adjusted lights, I begged Mitchell to tell me more dating horror stories.
He told me about a blond guy named Trey who whipped his dick out while he was driving Mitchell home. This wouldn’t have been so shocking, except Trey was married to a woman friend of Mitchell’s, and he was a marriage counselor. After he was rebuffed by Mitchell, he claimed he had only unleashed Mr. Happy as a social experiment, just to see what might happen. Then he cried for twenty minutes, pulled over on the side of the freeway, no escape in sight.
“That’s not very funny,” I said.
“You wanted horror stories. Now you have to tell me one.”
“I guess I could tell you about prom. You might not like me anymore after you hear the whole thing.”
He nodded with approval. “You really know how to sell a story. Now tell.”
I looked around at all the people standing around, looking annoyed and busy, moving lights and props. “Mitchell, are you really the assistant to the photographer, or is your job to babysit the models?”
“Babysit is such a strong word. Tell me the story before I die of suspense.”
We moved further away from the hive of activity around the four-poster bed on set, over to a leather sofa. It was one of those brown sofas with loose cushions and plenty of distress marks—a real man’s sofa. In fact, the sofa had reminded me of the story.
I told Mitchell of how I’d turned down two invitations to my senior high school prom from perfectly-decent guys, because I’d been holding out hope Adrian Storm would come to his senses and finally realize I wasn’t just a girl, but the girl. Meanwhile, he’d been holding out hope that staring wistfully at Chantalle Hart would somehow lead to the two of them going to prom together, even though she’d been dating Kevin Spencer.
With only three days left until the big day, I received a proposal from Kevin Spencer’s younger-by-ten-months brother, Jett Spencer. Despite the cool-ass name, Jett was by far the less desirable of the Spencer brothers, but he was about four-fifths better than going to prom solo and circle-dancing with the other solo girls, whose fathers were relieved and mothers were heartbroken.
Jett made a strong case for himself. He’d brought to school a photograph of himself in the tuxedo he’d already taken the liberty of renting, and he showed me a printout of the corsage he would buy me, as well as details of where we would pose for professional photos between the dinner and the dance. He said he had an “average” face, and that when I went off to college after graduation, I could proudly display the photo of us at prom together, and make other guys jealous, because they’d assume he had a big dick.
At this point in my and Jett’s conversation, which was in the cafeteria, I started to laugh, because I thought he was about to produce, from the folder on the table between us, proof of his dick size. To my relief, the next thing to come out was the receipt for a limousine rental.
There are only two limousines in all of Beaverdale—one white, and one black, both with tinted windows and their own legends. He and his brother had rented the white one, which, to our knowledge, had never been vomited in.
Jett got out of his chair, came around to my side of the table, and got down on one knee. He removed his thick-lensed glasses and said, “I’ll take these off for the photos. What do you say, Peaches? Will you be my prom date?”
I looked up and noticed Adrian standing motionless with a tray of two cafeteria meals in his hands. (He started eating two lunches about mid-way through twelfth grade in an attempt to put some muscle on his skinny body.) He looked annoyed, which made me smile.
Jett took my smile to mean yes, and did that thing where you pump the air with your fist. A bunch of people cheered, and he returned to his side of the table looking a full inch taller. I didn’t have the heart to say no after that, because he was a sweet guy, plus I wanted to ride in the good limo and make my mother cry happy tears.